How To Take A Screenshot & Apply Artistic Effects With The New MS Word 2010

If Microsoft 2007 covered all that you could think of doing with a document, think again. Two new features (among the ten or so) introduced in Microsoft Word 2010 help to reduce your dependency on third-party screenshot tools and a photo editor by just a smidgen. The latest version of Microsoft Office Suite gives you an ‘inbuilt’ screenshot tool and a slew of artistic effects to play around with in your documents. You might remember a screen clipping tool from OneNote 2007; if you used that to good effect, you will find the latest addition in MS Word 2010 and MS PowerPoint 2010 to be a welcome change.
Let’s get down to the grist with a Word document and see how these two new features can be time-savers for the office worker who doesn’t have to rely on a third party installed app anymore.
Do remember that the new features will not work if you save the document in the Word 97-2003 format.

Taking A Screenshot With Microsoft Word 2010

The screenshot feature allows you to take a snap of the screen or anything open on the desktop and immediately paste it in the open Word document. Let’s say I am working on an article and I need to take a quick screenshot of an open app or a website. Here’s how I go about it from within Word itself.
On the Ribbon click on the Insert tab and select the Screenshot tool located on the Illustrations group.

The first click on that little arrow displays a box with a list of screens of open applications on the desktop. You can select any of the thumbnails and take a screenshot which automatically inserts it into your current document.

If you want to capture any screen apart from those displayed in the preview box, click on the Screen Clipping button. Word 2010 minimizes and displays the desktop or the last screen that was displayed. It fades out and gives you a crosshair to drag and select your cross-section for the screen capture.
The area you dragged and selected is captured and pasted into your Word document. Notice that as soon as the capture is inserted, the context sensitive Picture Tools tab gets displayed to perform more actions on the capture.

Apply Some Artistic Effects On Your Capture (Or Pictures)

Photoshop wannabes can warm their hands on the Artistic Effects tool on the Ribbon. Any picture inserted into a Word document by way of a screen capture or the normal route of Insert – Picture opens up the set of tools available under Picture Tools. Artistic Effects is one of them on the Adjust group.

Click on the Artistic Effects button to show a dropdown with a gallery of thumbnails revealing the variety of effects you can apply on the image. For e.g, something like a Pencil Sketch. Hovering over each thumbnail gives you an inkling with a live preview before applying a particular artistic effect.

Clicking on Artistic Effects Options opens up the Format Shape panel for you to finetune your ‘artistic creations’ with things like Transparency, Glow and Soft Edges etc.

That’s it! Clicking on the first thumbnail in the dropdown restores the original image.
The screenshot feature is a tremendous time saver because you no longer have to rely on a third party tool to help you capture, save, and insert it into your document. You can do it from within the Word document itself. The commands available via Picture Tools also help you perform basic image editing in place within the document. Combined with the powerful formatting functions of Word, the present all-round capability can help you push out professional MS Word documents easily. Here. our previously published free guide on How To Create Professional Reports & Docs on Word also could be a great help.
Have you tried your hand on these two features to take a screenshot with Word? Let us know if you find them useful.